a capital punishment in which the head is severed from the body by the stroke of an axe, a sword, or some other instrument.

Beheading, called decollatio, was a military punishment among the Romans. The head of the culprit was laid on a cippus or block placed in a pit dug for the purpose beyond the castra, and near the porta decumana; and preparatory to the stroke, he was tied to a stake and whipped with cords. In the early ages the blow was given with an axe, but in after times with a sword, which was thought the more reputable manner of execution. In England decapitation is a punishment reserved for the nobility, as was formerly the case in France, being reputed less derogatory to their rank than hanging, which is the punishment inflicted on ordinary criminals.

In Scotland, beheading was anciently performed by an edged instrument called the maiden, consisting of a vertical frame with a sharp and heavily loaded axe or knife-edged iron, which in descending chopped off the head. It was introduced into this country by the Regent Morton, who, as in several similar instances, was himself the first that suffered by it. This instrument has been preserved, and may still be seen in the museum of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries. The guillotine, so called from the name of its inventor M. Guillotin, a physician, who is also said to have lost his head by his own contrivance, is an instrument somewhat analogous to the maiden, with this exception, that the edge of the knife descends obliquely, and thus the head is severed more instantaneously. In France, beheading is an ordinary capital punishment for great crimes, and the guillotine, notwithstanding all the revolutionary horrors associated with it, is still the instrument by which decollation is performed.